2 



Extracts from the Records of the 



particular from that which they had dispatched under Queen Eliza- 

 beth. 1 Still flowed the stream of recognizances in undiminished 

 volume ; still came the frequent badger for his licence, the maimed 

 soldier for his pension, the burnt-out cottager for a bounty, the 

 houseless labourer for leave to build himself an habitation ; still 

 the hundred-juries sent in their presentments of highways in decay, 

 and of persons who sold ale without licence, or absented themselves 

 from Church ; and still the familiar types of crime earned for them- 

 selves the familiar forms of punishment. 



But while in the sixteenth century the records of these transactions 

 are scanty, in the seventeenth they are abundant : in the year 1603 

 begins the series of great rolls or sessions bundles {bundelli or filacii 

 sessionis), which, in fairly continuous sequence, extends from that 

 time to the present day. 



These rolls — one for each sessions — are systematically made up. 

 Topmost come the writs returnable at each sessions, to the number, 

 sometimes, of sixty or seventy — thin slips of parchment about ten 

 inches long and less than an inch in width, charged with nearly two 

 hundred words in microscopic handwriting ; like their successors of 

 current practice they run in the name of the Sovereign, are tested 

 in that of the Custos Hotulorum, and bear the subscription (the 

 surname only) of the Clerk of the Peace. To these succeed the 

 recognizances, more numerous than the writs, of every size and 

 shape, and interesting chiefly from the signatures of the magistrates 

 by whom they were taken. The recognizances are occasionally 

 illustrated by the autograph annotations of the justice, such as : — 

 " for suspicion of killing a deer — read his examination " ; "a 

 notoriously disordered person, after many warnings " ; " for striking 

 and revylyng an honest minister. - ''' Then follow the indictments, 

 of which examples will occur in the following pages. Then the 

 roll of the grand jury and the jury panels returned by the several 

 hundreds. With these are frequently found panels of arraignment 

 containing the names of twelve selected jurors, and also those of the 



1 And see the summary of regular magisterial work given in Canon Jackson's 

 " Longleat Papers," vol. xiv., p. 208. 



